FORT FAIRFIELD, Maine — After four years of hard work, the forging of a unique partnership and a sizable financial commitment, residents in Fort Fairfield will soon be receiving vital health care a lot closer to home.
Town and state officials and representatives from Pines Health Services grabbed golden shovels Friday morning to break ground on the new Kimball Community Health Center.
The state-of-the-art primary care health clinic will be located on a green stretch of land on Harmony Lane. Construction is set to begin Monday with the first patients expected to come through the door in June 2013.
The $841,000 center will be developed and owned by the town. The municipality has entered into a lease and contract for services with Pines, a nonprofit physician practice management organization featuring providers from Caribou-based Cary Medical Center’s active medical staff.
Pines currently has offices in Caribou, Presque Isle, Van Buren and Limestone.
Funding will come from the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development, Fort Fairfield Residential Development Corporation’s senior citizens project, Pines and the town. It will be built without affecting the community’s property taxes and also will bring jobs to its citizens.
The clinic is being named after Dr. Herrick Kimball, who owned and operated Fort Fairfield’s first hospital, established in the 1940s.
Gary Sirois, a health care committee member who helped establish the project, said the new center will once again bring health care stability to the community.
Town Manager Dan Foster said the four-year effort involved three different citizen committees and the Town Council.
“The goal has always been for the community to have an open dialogue with a health care provider regarding economically sustainable health care services to our citizens,” he said. “The ability to establish a partnership that is mutually beneficial is paramount for the ongoing delivery of health care in Fort Fairfield.”
Foster said that owning the facility will allow the town to reduce the overhead costs to Pines, which in turn will enable them to deliver vital services while managing their costs.
The engineering firm B.R. Smith and Associates of Presque Isle has designed the facility and A&L Construction Co. from Presque Isle has been selected as the general contractor.
Jim Davis, chief executive officer of Pines Health Services, said the organization is excited to begin offering patient care.
“The town understands the unique financial challenges faced by health care providers,” he said. “Fort Fairfield’s ability to provide this facility was instrumental in assuring us that this partnership to provide quality, affordable and patient-centered health care to the residents of this community will be successful.”
To view floor plans of the Kimball Community Health Center, click here.
Pack up Dr. Fowler….you are headed to Presque Isle!!!
Good going people from the County.
good going for what? spending nearly a million dollars for a clinic for 3000 people to go to when you have all the health care needs you want 7 miles away in presque isle?? that, folks is what is making our health care unaffordable. the taxpayers cannot continue to have million dollar clinics and million dollar low income housing on every corner in this country. no wonder the country budget is 16 trillion over budget. keep up the good work, our kids will thank you over and over and over by having to pay for this in tax increases. now fort will have 2 health care buildings to take care of for 3000 people. good going.
TAMC is closer to 15 miles away. And with TAMC’s history of blatantly screwing the town of Fort Fairfield, can you blame them?? Pines is much better anyway.
TAMC is 12.1 miles from Fort Fairfield and Cary is 12.7 miles from Fort Fairfield. Given the proximity of these two health care centers and the fact that TAMC already is operating a health center in Fort Fairfield there is no rational justification in investing close to $1,000,000 in yet another medical facility in Fort Fairfield. What really is at work here is taxpayer money that was available for the taking and some very large egos in Fort Fairfield.
More taxes for the people of Fort Fairfield and Maine to pay.
I honestly think that another healthcare clinic is the last thing we need here in central Aroostook. There’s enough of them already and none of them are being used to their full potential. Town officials have been whining about loss of tax revenue because of the food processing plant being closed and torn down and just raised our property taxes – and now we’re going to have to pay for this building. I’m gonna be damn PO’d when they go up again next year!!!